Animal welfare spotlight: Nine Lives Foundation

There are many people here in our Bay Area backyard who devote their lives to the care and welfare of animals. This new series shines the spotlight on local animal welfare organizations and the extraordinary individuals behind them.

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Dr. Monica Thompson examines a few very cute kittens.

Kitten season is in full swing, and no one knows this better than veterinarian Dr. Monica Thompson.

She’s the powerhouse behind the Nine Lives Foundation in Redwood City, a no-kill nonprofit organization that rescues cats from death row, rehabilitates them and helps place them in permanent, loving homes. She is also responsible for founding the Feline Well-Care Clinic.

Dr. Thompson began her career as a relief vet at the Silicon Valley Humane Society in October 2003. She witnessed so many cats being assigned for euthanasia that she brought 17 home with her the first day on the job. “I couldn’t not take them with me,” she says. “These cats were put on the kill list for every reason imaginable: because they hissed, because they had a chipped tooth, because they had runny eyes or dermatitis or even because they had fleas,” she says. “All of these things are completely treatable.”

Luckily, she had recently started a boarding kennel for cats. Before long, her empty cages were packed with nearly 100 rescued felines. To help support her new kennel-turned-emergency shelter, Dr. Thompson opened a one-room vaccine clinic next door.

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Four months later, after nursing each cat back to health, Dr. Thompson held her first adoption event in February 2004. Miraculously, she found new homes for nearly all of the cats. This experience became the inspiration for the Nine Lives Foundation, which she launched in December of 2004.

“When I started rescuing cats, I didn’t have a business plan — or any real plan for that matter,” admits Dr. Thompson. “It was simply a knee-jerk reaction from seeing all of the cats who would die if I didn’t do something.”

As the number of cats she took in grew, so did her clinic.

Now her full-service vet practice includes more than 3,000 clients. Dr. Thompson says that as many as 70 percent of the cats she adopts out continue to be seen at the clinic. This is great news since the majority of the money that the clinic generates is used to directly fund the Nine Lives Foundation.

“The plight of a cat in a shelter is tough,” says Dr. Thompson.” I often get calls from shelters telling me that they have 50 to 100 cats slated for euthanasia the next day. ‘How many can you take?’ they ask me.” Nine Lives doesn’t have a time limit for the cats it rescues and Dr. Thompson takes them in as she has space. She will also spend any amount of money to save a cat.

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This includes Karma. His owners, David and Maritza, were nearly forced to have him euthanized because they couldn’t afford to pay the $1200 their vet quoted them for a surgery Karma needed to correct a life-threatening urinary blockage. As they were shopping around for the cheapest means of euthanasia, a friend referred them to the Nine Lives Foundation.

“We immediately called and told them about Karma and they offered to see him right away,” says David. He and Maritza weren’t able to drive Karma over to the clinic, so a volunteer came and picked him up. The surgery was a success. Dr. Thompson only charged the young couple $300 and allowed them to pay in installments. “She told us that if we had waited even a few more hours Karma probably would have died,” David says. “Now he’s completely back to his old playful self.”

“Most clinics don’t have the money to treat cats that are not immediately adoptable, which is why they end up on death row,” says Dr. Thompson. Magic, a cat that had fractured his leg was left in a cage in a local shelter without treatment for 10 days while he essentially waited to die. “It happens every day,” she says. She rescued Magic, amputated his leg and adopted him out. But these kinds of heartwarming, second-chance stories often come with a steep price tag.

Nine Lives’ overhead (including the clinic) runs about $40,000 to $50,000 a month, which covers everything from rent and insurance to supplies and the salaries of workers. The shelter’s current population tops out at about 225 cats.

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Nine Lives volunteer and “unofficial volunteer coordinator,” Laurel Hodghead describes herself as “Dr. T’s personal stalker.” She does everything from maintain the website (which she created from scratch by teaching herself basic HTML) to taking pictures and crafting descriptions of each adoptable cat that comes through the door. “I basically follow Dr. T around and ask her questions about the cats so I can post them on the web,” she says.

Laurel devotes about 20 hours a week to the cats, which she’s been doing since March 2005 — all while holding down a full-time job. Since she lives just 10 short blocks away, she often finds herself “in the neighborhood” and will pop in for a “quick visit.” “I’m here most every night,” she says, although she tries to take Sundays off.

While Nine Lives has a core group of dedicated volunteers (and can always use more helping hands), Laurel explains that what the organization needs most are donations of the “cash variety” to support basic operations. In addition to monthly overhead, the Foundation spent $12,000 on antibiotics alone last year. To make a donation click here (the link is at the very bottom of the page).

Laurel says that while other shelters often race to get their hands on the cutest, most adoptable animals, Nine Lives seeks out the “misfits.” “We take the sick and injured kitties. The ones with behavioral issues and anything special,” she says. One cat she and the other volunteers nicknamed “Simon the Hugger” came in covered in fleas. He got a shot and some steroids and was good as new. “This is a safe place for cats to come and spend just a few days or weeks, if they are adopted out right away, or the rest of their lives if need be.”

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When asked about how much she has personally sacrificed for the lives of cats, Dr. Thompson sighs and says, “This is not how I planned my life. It just turned out this way. Sometimes it’s depressing, because it seems like nothing is going to change this situation no matter how much we spay and neuter — there are always more cats than we can save. I just hope that when people learn about us they might be inspired to start something like this themselves.”